The whole village, young and old, came to the churchyard when they laid her to rest--save only the old man. He could not realize that she was dead, and he had gone to pick winter berries to decorate her couch.
When he returned and could not find her, they were obliged to tell him the truth--that her body had been put away in the cold earth--and then his grief and distress were pitiful to see. He seemed at once to lose all power of thought or action, save as they concerned her alone.
Day by day he sought for her about the house or in the garden, calling her name wildly. At other times he sat before the fire staring dully, and did not seem to hear when they spoke to him.
At length, they found, one day, that he had risen early, and, with his knapsack on his back, his staff in hand, her own straw hat, and little basket full of such things as she had been used to carry, was gone. As they were making ready to pursue him far and wide, a frightened schoolboy came who had seen him, but a moment before, sitting in the church--upon her grave, he said.
They hastened there, and going softly to the door, espied him in the attitude of one who waited patiently. They did not disturb him then, but kept a watch upon him all that day. When it grew quite dark, he rose and returned home, and went to bed, murmuring to himself, "She will come to-morrow!"
Upon the morrow he was there again from sunrise until night; and still at night he laid him down to rest, and murmured, "She will come to-morrow!"
And thenceforth, every day, and all day long, he waited at her grave for her. How many pictures of new journeys over pleasant country, of resting-places under the free broad sky, of rambles in the fields and woods, and paths not often trodden; how many tones of that one well-remembered voice; how many glimpses of the form, the fluttering dress, the hair that waved so gaily in the wind; how many visions of what had been, and what he hoped was yet to be--rose up before him, in the old, dull, silent church! He never told them what he thought, or where he went. He would sit with them at night, pondering with a secret satisfaction, they could see, upon the flight that he and she would take before night came again; and still they would hear him whisper in his prayers, "Lord! Let her come to-morrow!"